


All Good Things To Those Who Wait

by Arkada



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Hopeful Ending, Inspired by Real Events, M/M, Nile Freeman Needs a Hug, Nile Freeman gets a hug, background Joe/Nicky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26928826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arkada/pseuds/Arkada
Summary: Nile hopes that modern search-and-rescue methods might be able to find Quỳnh, where the ye-olde approaches used by Andy centuries ago failed.Unfortunately, recent history hasn’t been very successful in finding people lost at sea.Nile despairs, but Joe is there to provide comfort and some words of hope.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani
Comments: 12
Kudos: 106





	All Good Things To Those Who Wait

It’s not that Nile thinks Andy hasn’t looked for Quỳnh. Of course not, she could never think that - she knows, without ever having to ask the question, that Andy hunted down every person who so much as witnessed their witch trial, that she probably sailed for years trying to drag a net across the bottom of the sea. But the sixteenth century didn’t have submarines, or sonar, or satellites, and Nile…

Well, if Andy gave up because it was impossible, maybe something’s changed since then. And maybe, if Nile sits in this public library with free-to-use computers for long enough, she can work out what it is.

She approaches it with logic first, just like she’d approach locating a terrorist cell in the Marines. What resources did they have? What resources did they _need?_ Who else could have been involved? Were they in a hurry?

She knows it happened in the UK - Andy and the others probably know _where_ in the UK, but Nile has no intention of asking any of them to tell that story again, so she’ll stick with what she’s already got. Quỳnh was taken on a ship, and she was thrown overboard somewhere. If it was Nile sailing that ship, terrified of her own eternal damnation, she’d want two opposing things: to take the witch as far away from shore as she could, and to get rid of the witch as quickly as possible.

She knows Quỳnh wouldn’t have gone quietly. Those sailors would have been damned a thousand times over before they left port.

Nile’s first guess is that they would have abandoned Quỳnh as soon as they were out of sight of land. No clues which direction to go, if Quỳnh somehow reached the surface again, but without spending a minute longer with her on board than necessary.

Nile’s Google search looks reasonably innocent for somebody trying to find an ancient immortal warrior: _how far away is the horizon at sea._ The answer isn’t exactly straightforward, but after going down a few rabbit holes of geometry and meteorology she thinks she has a reasonable estimate. She prints off a map of the UK, borrows a pen and a ruler, and starts measuring the distance between the coast and where the sailors couldn’t see the coast anymore. 

She winds up with a squiggly arc around Great Britain and is suddenly reasonably confident that Quỳnh is somewhere along that line.

The line crosses through the Atlantic, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Irish Sea, _and_ the Celtic Sea, which Nile didn’t even know was a thing before now. It’s also about 1,700 miles long, which is a lot of miles. And if the sailors _didn’t_ drop Quỳnh just over the horizon, but went as far out as they could while still getting back to shore by dark… Nile searches, _how fast did an English sailing ship go_ , and comes up with way too many facts about boats. She puts it more simply, _how far could a sailing ship go in a day._ Then it’s half of that number, to let them get out and back, and…

The line widens into an area that’s over 40,000 square miles big.

It’s not as helpful as Nile was hoping. It’s too many miles to search effectively - it’s looking for a needle in a haystack the size of Louisiana. She’s also discovered nothing that Andy couldn’t have worked out for herself. All Nile’s done is _define_ the search area, not narrow it.

What else does she know?

She knows there is light where Quỳnh is. Just enough that Nile’s dreams show her the shape of the coffin, the horrifying glimpse of Quỳnh’s pale face through the mask of the Iron Maiden.

So, _how deep does sunlight go underwater_ , then, _how bright is a lumen_ and _depth map of the Atlantic Ocean_. That lets Nile rule out some of the search area that’s too deep or too shallow to match her dreams, but it also offers up a bunch more of the sea floor that’s plausible if any of her logic - or guesses - so far aren’t right. 

_Shit._ Nile pushes the keyboard away and drops her head into her hands. She’s not done yet, she just needs to come at it from another angle…

Okay, so, if she can’t pin down where Quỳnh is, maybe she can start looking where other witches were drowned? If there’s a whole graveyard of Iron Maidens down there somewhere, that must be much easier to find than just one.

Nile’s Googling turns morbid; _did England execute witches at sea_ becomes _were witches killed at sea_ becomes _list of punishments for witch trials in England_. And from that she draws the gloomy conclusion that not only did this never happen to anyone else, nobody but the five of them knows it even happened to Quỳnh.

_Six_ , Nile corrects herself bleakly. Quỳnh herself knows damn well what happened.

Nile shakes it off; she’s not giving in yet. If she can’t find Quỳnh with research, she’ll just have to find her the normal way. Nile Googles _finding people lost at sea_ and _how to search and rescue at sea_ and _finding metal in the sea_ , and starts reading.

And then she remembers what happened to that plane in 2014.

In one awful moment, Nile finally grasps at just a _hint_ of how Andy must have felt, all those centuries ago, when she had to accept the devastating reality that this couldn’t be done.

She goes hot with anger and disappointment and embarrassment, shuts down the computer as quickly as possible and shreds all her notes before stuffing them in the bin. God, how did she think she could actually pull this off, finish in a single morning what four immortals have spent centuries trying to do? She really thought she’d sweep in and save Quỳnh just like that, she’s such an _idiot_ …

Nile feels no better after the walk to their current safe house. Just as stupid, just as arrogant, just as mad at herself for failing and madder for trying in the first place-

“I need to punch something,” she grates out on entering the living room, and all three of the others look up at her in surprise.

Nicky speaks first, clearly worried. “Do you want to talk about-”

Joe is already out of his chair, a humorless but easy smile on his lips. “She wants to punch something, _hayati_ ,” he corrects Nicky confidently, and jerks his head towards the bedrooms. “Come on, Nile.”

It’s a relief. Nile will feel bad about it later, but right now she doesn’t want to even look at Nicky if there’s going to be concern looking back. She doesn’t think she can look at Andy at all. Joe’s brisk, situation-normal approach is the only thing she can handle without falling to pieces.

Nile follows him, feeling the eyes of the other two boring into her back. She knows they’ll have the whole story out of her soon enough, she’s always been a terrible liar, but she just wants a few selfish minutes first to smash _something_ into compliance with her plans.

Joe is doing something inelegant to a pillow, stuffing it into a case that’s already full. Then he pulls a couple of belts out of nowhere - Nile recognizes one of them as Nicky’s - and wraps them tight around the overstuffed pillowcase.

And just like that he’s holding a boxing pad, stance braced, and looks the spitting image of Nile’s drill instructors back in Basic. “All right, let’s go.”

Nile grunts, and slams her fist into the center. Joe barely moves an inch. He stares her down, huffing a laugh. “Come on, you won’t vent anything with a hit like _that_.”

She throws an uppercut, an elbow, and finishes with a kick. That took a little effort - her heart rate’s starting to rise, breath a little heavier. It feels good.

The punches come faster, and once’s she’s started it’s like she doesn’t know how to stop. Joe adjusts his stance and pushes back harder. Blow after blow after blow, until Nile can feel her arms and shoulders taking the strain, her jaw aching from gritting her teeth. Her muscles are burning almost as much as her eyes. She hits one of the belts and cuts herself on it, leaves a spray of bloody marks on the fabric before it’s healed up again.

How _could_ she - the others deserve better than her clumsy floundering in their grief - she should have known this _wasn’t her gift to give_ -

Nile screams, lets it tear right through her and rip everything out with it, and accidentally-on-purpose her next punch misses and she collapses into the pillow.

Joe is ready for her, arms catching her and his body strong and stable against her back. He brings her gently down to the floor, still holding her, and Nile shoves her face into the pillow and sobs.

Things only clear up when she hiccups so hard the back of her head cracks Joe in the nose. It’s so absurd that she’s laughing as she scrambles away and tries to apologize, Joe waving it aside as he tells her Nicky’s done worse in his sleep. Nile settles herself as Joe rambles a little about the time Nicky rolled over and pushed him onto a knife they’d sharpened that evening and forgotten to sheathe afterwards. It’s a funny story, and she wants to hear it again when she’s in a mood to appreciate it, but after a few minutes she can tell Joe’s just filling the silence until she’s ready to talk.

Nile ends up with her legs crossed, clutching the stupid pillow to her chest. Joe sits opposite her, almost mirroring her pose, but open and relaxed. Inviting. Safe. She takes a deep breath, and Joe manages to make the story’s end on cue seem natural. 

Nile speaks into the opening before she can lose her nerve. “Do you know what MH370 was?”

Joe’s lips press together. She thinks it’s impossible he wouldn’t have heard of it, and maybe that’s true, but he just says, “Tell me.”

“It was a plane, passenger plane, went down in the Indian Ocean a few years ago. Big mystery, hundreds of people missing - air traffic control lost track of it, so the whole world started looking. We - I mean, the US military - they sent people, Malaysia, China, the UK, Australia - just this massive international effort. There was a crowdsourcing campaign to scan satellite photos of the ocean, my brother and his friends would help on their phones between classes, looking for debris. Millions of people looked at those photos, all over the world.”

She’s picking at a loose thread in the pillowcase. She’ll probably unravel the thing before she’s done. She doesn’t stop. Joe is silent, his bent knees a bare inch from hers, his expression steadying enough to let her go on.

“They searched for _years_ and still have no idea where the plane actually is. All those people, all that effort and time, and they couldn’t find a metal shell in the ocean hundreds of times bigger than… than Quỳnh.” Nile looks up, eyes so teary she can’t see, but it feels wrong to hide her confession from Joe. He deserves the whole ugly truth. “I thought I could find her. I thought maybe there was something new you guys hadn’t tried yet, that maybe we’d get lucky and… But I realized that if the world can’t find an entire plane, there’s no way I can find one coffin. She’s down there, and I can’t help, and…”

“Oh, Nile,” Joe breathes, and opens his arms again. She lets herself fall against his chest, bringing the pillow with her. Joe’s hands rub firm circles into her back and shoulder, and his lips press a kiss into her hair. Nile’s tears soak into his shirt.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out. “This is stupid, I’ve never even met her and all I did was Google for an hour, I shouldn’t be like this…”

“No,” Joe says softly. “You held her and she slipped through your fingers. You’ve just lost her for the first time. Of course it’s devastating.”

Nile nods desperately. “I thought it would _work_ , I could do it, I could bring her back… Giving up on that, I - I hate it, but I can’t _not_.”

“I know,” Joe murmurs. “Booker tried too.” Nile feels too wrung out to sift through the layers of emotion about Booker in Joe’s voice, just clings to what he’s offering her: acceptance. “That was almost the first thing he did after he’d learned to mourn his wife and sons, was try to bring Quỳnh back to us. He bought ownership in fishing companies, shipping companies, anyone with a reason to be in that part of the ocean. Studied invention after invention. When nothing worked, he’d give up for a few decades, then come across something else and try again. Eventually it was oceanography, then marine archaeology. He thought that would be the key, that would find her for sure, some research expedition to find the drowned witch, but…”

Nile swallows, and recites her search results. “But he couldn’t convince anyone to start looking, because there’s no proof witches were ever drowned at sea.”

Joe nods. “With a shortage of immortals in the world, the witch trials never found another victim who couldn’t be burnt or hanged or beheaded. They never needed to go so far again, and we think… they were so afraid they never wrote down what they’d done. So today it is as you say. With no proof, other than Andy’s eyewitness testimony and your dreams, nobody has a reason to look. And that isn’t exactly proof we can bring to bear.”

“So we just have to leave Quỳnh down there? Everything she’s already suffered, she’s _still_ suffering and there’s really nothing we can do…”

Joe sighs, and kisses her head again. He seems to be thinking something over. Nile is not about to rush him.

His embrace is warm, and comforting in a way that says _family_ even though Nile’s only known him for a couple of months. He smells good, some kind of subtle masculine cologne like her grandpa used to wear. And it’s weirdly reassuring to know that, if some random assailant managed to burst through the door, Joe could kill them in three ways without even getting up.

“Not a word of this to Andy,” Joe says eventually. “She has faith of a sort, but not in the world, and this will not comfort her. She would call it a false hope, and that I will not do to her.”

He waits for Nile to nod assent before he continues.

“We are meant to find each other. If we are not chosen at random, then we are chosen for a purpose. And whatever is doing the choosing - be it God, or destiny, or simple physics - I believe it does not turn its back on us once we get started. Quỳnh will come back to us because we belong together. She must. There are still chances. Every year it is harder for us to hide from the world, it is harder for her to stay lost, too. The right day, the right fishing boat, the right set of naval exercises… Nothing lasts forever, and neither will her torment. It is only a matter of time.”

He gives Nile a little squeeze, and his voice lightens. “One day we’ll turn around and there she’ll be, asking what took so long.”

Nile’s heart aches for him, but Joe’s not the only one who thinks false hope is cruel. “In the dreams, I feel her, she’s… I don’t think she’s going to come out of the water like that.”

“I didn’t say she’d come out of the water like that. I said that one day our sister will come back to us. And we will wait for her, however long it takes.”

Nile wants to believe it, that inevitably someone’s going to map the right bit of the sea floor and find Quỳnh, or that the iron will rust and she’ll break free and eventually drift to shore. And that somehow it won’t be too late, that it’s possible to heal from five hundred years of the worst imaginable torture, to catch up with a world changing faster than ever.

“I really hope you’re right,” is all she can say. If Joe _is_ right, some day they’ll find out. All they can do is wait.

Nile sighs, and feels the last of the tension she’s been carrying since the library drain out of her. Joe senses it, and pats her shoulder.

“Ready to go back out? Nicky’s probably made you about a dozen cups of tea by now.”

Nile laughs, but it’s hollow, and she doesn’t move. The tension might be gone, but it hasn’t been replaced by anything to help her get up.

“They’ll be grateful that you tried,” Joe says, somber again. “I promise. Quỳnh belongs to you too, now.”

“I’m… I’m really tired,” Nile admits. “I don’t suppose one of Nicky’s teas is good for sleeping?”

“I think we can find a tea that pairs well with an afternoon nap.”

Nile hefts the double pillow in her arms. “You’ll have to un-Frankenstein this thing first.”

“Of course,” Joe says, and when he takes it from her she lets it go. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Nile climbs to her feet, Joe’s hand coming up to steady her. She feels emptied out, and left at the bottom is something like…

She misses Quỳnh. Nile’s never even met her, the nightmares don’t count, and she misses her. And the grand conclusion of this fucked-up day is that there’s nothing she can do to miss Quỳnh any less. But…

Nile does have people who miss Quỳnh every bit as much as she does, and more. She can drink Nicky’s tea, and Andy will stroke her hair a little, and Joe will bring her a pillow that’s not for punching, and she’ll fall asleep on the couch, surrounded by people who are going to make sure she’s okay.

And maybe one day if all the stars align, Quỳnh will come back to them somehow. If all Nile can do to see that day is wait, then that’s what she’s going to do.

As long as it takes.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my betas, [Haldane](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Haldane/) and [Apples](https://appleslostherpassword.tumblr.com/).


End file.
